The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat.

  • Dov Ospovat
Date:
1995, ©1981
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Notes to pp. 1-4 Introduction: Darwin and his fellow naturalists 1 There have been several studies of this important early period. See especially Sandra Herbert, The Place of Man in the Development of Darwin's Theory of Transmutation, Parts i and 2; David Kohn, Theories to Work By; Camille Limoges, La Sélection Naturelle. See also Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: Malcolm J. Kottler, Charles Darwin's Biological Species Concept and Theory of Geographic Specia- tion. 2 On Darwin's life the best source is still LLD. See also Gruber, Darwin on Man: Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, pp. 1-146; [Geoffrey Harry Wells] Geoffrey West, Charles Darwin. 3 See for instance W. Faye Cannon, The Whewell-Darwin Controversy, p. 383; Stephen J. Gould, Ever Sime Darwin, pp. 21-7; Sylvan S. Schweber, The Origin of the Origin Revisited, pp. 310-15. 4 In considering the first, Derek Freeman has given a brief answer to the second - that Darwin spent the years collecting needed evidence: The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, pp. 232-3- 5 Throughout I use the terms evolution and evolutionary, despite the fact that Darwin did not employ them before 1859. There is some slight warrant for this in Darwin's use of the word evolved in his essays of the 1840s: Sketch of 1842, p. 52; Essay of 1844, p. 255. See Peter J. Bowler, The Changing Meaning of 'Evolution.' 6 See Natural Selection, General Introduction. 7 Whether the harmony was self-adjusting or required the intervention of the creator to maintain it amid the changes revealed by geology was a question on which thinkers might differ who nevertheless agreed on the fact of harmony. 8 The two best accounts of the formation of Darwin's theory deny it. See Kohn, Theories to Work By, and Limoges, La Sélection Naturelle. Ernst Mayr hints at it in Darwin and Natural Selection, p. 326. 9 Jerome R. Ravetz's comment on the social character of the work of the individual scientist is worth recalling in this regard: The personal endeavour that is necessary for worthwhile scientific work is itself a very artificial and social creation. For the individual talent and style, and the special private knowledge, are applied in a highly stylized fashion: to the investigation of problems concerning a given set of intellectually con¬ structed objects, working up the materials derived from experience in accordance with established methods, and drawing conclusions \yithin accepted patterns of argument. Even the greatest creative work, in which all these components may be strongly modified, must base itself on a tradition in which such modifications themselves are a natural develop¬ ment {Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, p. 237). 10 In terms of competence, career orientation, and audience to which he 237